With Patch 7.1.5 just released, we're having Wowhead Mage Guide writer Malon analyze all of the Arcane, Fire, and Frost changes in the patch. Check out his updated Arcane, Fire, and Frost guides on Wowhead!

With 7.1.5 around the corner, we've asked our Havoc and Vengeance guide writers to break down the Patch 7.1.5 changes in more detail so you are prepared for the upcoming patch! In this post, Kib and Munkky will go over the impact of changes to Demon Hunter abilities, legendaries, talents, and stats.

Blizzard has announced the release date for Patch 7.1.5--it is January 10th! Their official preview included a survival video guide to the main topics, and you can learn more about each 7.1.5 addition with Wowhead's own guides linked below and in the new "Patch 7.1.5" menu on the navigation bar at the top of every page.

Several class updates were posted in response to 7.1.5 feedback including Unholy Death Knights and Marksmanship Hunters. Note that while the term "hotfix" is used this doesn't mean it's a live hotfix visible in 7.1--it means that updates are being made to the PTR outside of formal builds with datamining.

For blue posts today, Blizzard clarified some of their recent class balance changes and the design approach behind them. This included the much anticipated traps for Survival Hunters, which was teased during several BlizzCon interviews, as well as an explanation on what they are trying to do with Fire mages.

Blizzard also added keystone leaderboards for Mythic+ dungeons. You'll now be able to see who has the best time by realm and dungeon.

When the 7.1.5 PTR went up earlier this week, we had spell changes from datamining but no specific class changes in the official patch notes. As such, there was some confusion as to the intended changes and class directions for specializations that seemed unfinished.

Today, Blizzard explained that the 7.1.5 PTR so far only shows roughly half of the mechanical changes, with more of them coming in the next build. Once the mechanical changes are in a good place, adjustments to overall performance will follow.

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas is answering all of your questions about Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan. We will be summarizing his answers below in this liveblog. This is not a direct transcript of the Q&A; to see new updates, please refresh the page. To see updates several minutes faster, please be logged into Wowhead.

Patch 7.1 will be live October 25th with the Raid Trial of Valor on November 8th!

Over the weekend, the Stormwind and Orgrimmar guards wielded lightsabers. They may be back to normal now, but there are many other references in WoW, which TradeChat has highlighted in her latest video.

Read the full article for more news, including Legion Class Change Overviews, the return of the Snowy Owl pet, and changes to low-level Mail gear in Legion.

We've also launched a series of Legion Class Changes guides, in the style of our popular Warlords ones. These articles break down what's new for each spec and class--artifacts, talents, abilities, class halls, etc. We don't have Legion data yet, but we have a good amount of information from the class blogs, Legion panels, and Darkmoon Faire chats.

I wanted to take a moment to provide context for some of the Patch 5.4 class changes that we’ve been making. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to get acquainted with the 5.4 PTR Patch Notes, as this watercooler is going into detail on the changes listed. I’ll discuss the changes to each class, but here are a few things to keep in mind before we get started:

The team made a lot of changes to glyphs that weren’t working out well or were just to provide some new choices. There were a lot of changes so to keep this blog manageable, I’m not going to go into them in detail. I’m not going to get into specific damage or healing tuning unless it requires extra explanation for some reason. In general, you can assume that your damage was too low or too high if you see generic buffs or nerfs to abilities. As I write this, Patch 5.4 has not shipped yet, so if there are changes yet to come, I’m obviously not going to be able to cover

Today's news roundup takes a look at the first wave of 5.4 Battle Pets in the PTR pet journal, as well as some details behind the upcoming nerf--it's no longer a passive ability and instead has a duration of 15 seconds with a 1.5 minute cooldown.